My Design journey takes a leap into cinema to understand and explore an unconventional way of storytelling, Montage theory. I explored this technique as part of a team in a span of 4 weeks.
Team - Saloni Dhingra, Shreya Garg, Tanisha Tokas, Mehak Vohra
The initial days connected back to the Image making project, of building narratives through images. Circles in a Circle is an abstract composition painted by Wassily Kandinsky in 1923. It's indefinite concept led to really interesting interpretations for each of us. Set in a time when no one knew how space looked like, I conveyed the painting as an astronomer's representation of space.
The final outcome builds a comical narrative through two characters, an artist and an architecture. Kandinsky's painting is the architect's blueprint which ends up in the hands of the painter. The work becomes a masterpiece, immortalizing the artist as the father of abstract art.
Understanding Montage theory
I have always admired Premchand's power of creating a visual narrative through his words and this also influenced my approach of storytelling greatly, to be so descriptive that the story comes clear and alive to every person. Montage theory was an absolute contrasting concept, driving me to ponder deeply to weave the conclusion of the story.
The project gave us an opportunity to understand this technique through multiple exercises. The first attempt was to capture footages of different time and space, and arrange them to collectively convey a theme.
Assignment 2
We as a team of 4, pursued 3 ideas. In the initial explorations, I found it hard to build stories in the random clips. It was through the final exploration of Saloni's edit of clips from the Carnival, I understood that to create a story in a montage it is important to identify a common thread, like the pinwheel in the outcome.
Another set of this exercise was building a different narrative from the footages of Group 9. The original edit of the footage was based on the concept of home, featuring traffic and travelling. From the footages I identified two themes, Childhood and adulthood so we decided to convey the contrast between these two for the outcome.
My iterations - drive link
It was interesting how a montage could convey a different narrative. Unlike continuity editing, the meaning is not predefined therefore a montage is always open to the interpretations of the viewers.
Assignment 3
During this exercise, we struggled to take one idea as a group. I realised that one needs to be open to improvisation while working in a group/team, this is necessary to deliver a good outcome and work in harmony.
Assignment 3
Documentary
This was the most exciting part of the project. I had a lot of ideas for this outcome, but I also wanted to justify whatever subject we choose to go forward with.
Keeping in mind the timeframe, we settled on Khaadi Baoli as our subject for the Documentary. Some facts I discovered while researching about the place:
It is Asia's largest spice market, situated in Old Delhi.
The market has a long history and some believe it was established in 1700s.
I also referred to a few documentaries, and learned about emotional storytelling and how compositions can effectively make the viewer feel closer to the subject. I particular liked 'Bazaar Sitaram', a documentary film by Neena Gupta. She had created this short film to capture the essence of the streets and culture of Sitaram Bazaar, a place in Old Delhi, and portrayed it through an engaging story.
The secondary research on Khaadi Baoli wasn't enough to identify a theme for the documentary, so we made our first visit to enquire about the place. We were able to capture some stories and we found Gadodia Market especially fascinating.
I researched a bit more about the market and found some shops that have a long history and are being looked after by the 6th-10th generation of the owner. This proved to be a successful lead and we built a theme of traditions and how the shops have been passed as generational wealth.
Fiction
I wanted to explore parallel cinema through a fiction film but there was lack of agreement which prevented me from pursuing this idea. For the fiction, the group was working on a horror film. While the idea was stimulating it lacked certain connections between the plot so we iterated multiple endings. After finalizing the story, I developed the script and my understanding from Emotional storytelling helped me add more emotional depth into the scenes.
I directed the scenes, handled the camera and edited 2 of 4 scenes.
Reflection
The project was a good exposure to explore different mediums of filmmaking. I particularly enjoyed creating the Documentary, and the concept of searching for truth through this medium. During the project we were introduced to 'Parallel cinema' and I really enjoyed learning about this genre of Cinema and wanted to create a fiction in this genre but couldn't pursue the idea due to group.
Comments